Chapter 36
“Sorry for—” Claudio waved his hand, glancing around the Schola village square.
“The disruption in your schedule. But I wanted to catch you before you went home tonight. Mind a walk up to the cottages? I want somewhere private, if there’s somewhere else you’d prefer.
” Doing it here, near Tiberius’s apprenticeship made finding a quiet spot a little easier.
It wasn’t terribly busy, given that it was summer, but there were still plenty of people around.
He was nervous about this in a dozen ways.
He’d wanted to tell Tiberius when there wasn’t a rush, the sudden pressure.
And then Orion and Gabe had written last night, and there wasn’t time for anything else.
Tiberius nodded, looking unsettled, before putting his hands behind his back. It made the tension settle in his shoulders. “Sure.” He coughed as if something had caught in his throat. “It’s not a problem. Something important?”
Claudio had to remember to play this as smoothly as he could.
There wasn’t any good making more of a fuss than was absolutely necessary.
He nodded, rather than trying to make words come out right, setting off on the road up towards the cottages.
Once they were moving, it was easier to ask about the ordinary things.
What Tiberius had been working on this week.
Normally they’d have caught up last night, but since he’d been out in the field, they hadn’t had the chance.
Agates, apparently, were the answer. It was easy to ask questions about that, about what made them more challenging to cut and carve for talismans.
Tiberius was comfortable talking about it.
Agates were cheap enough for practice, but also built the skills he needed and wanted for the next set of things to learn.
He’d been sketching out a design for carving. That was new to him.
No one in their family had ever particularly encouraged art.
Not Father, not Mother. Minerva’s fondness for music was all right.
She was a woman, and besides, it sometimes went well with Incantation.
Art for the sake of art, carving for the sake of beauty, that wasn’t something Claudio could have dreamed of doing.
Not that he was much of an artist, beyond the basics needed for field sketches.
That topic carried them along out of the village, up the path, and west toward the cottages.
The school used them with the first years before they were placed into their Houses.
And then for projects, when a little space was a good idea.
Claudio had fond memories of several Friday nights spent in one cottage or another, letting off high spirits and not feeling so penned in.
Once they were there, Claudio gestured at one of the benches by the long table nearest them. “Might want to sit?”
Tiberius sat. Claudio settled on the bench on the other side, hands under the table. “Look. There’s some gossip, and I wanted you to hear from me what it’s about, and what the truth of it is. Gabe and Orion passed it on from the meeting last night.”
“Is it gossip Grandmother knows?” That was Tiberius’s first question, the sensible one. His son was just as clever as needed.
“Oh, yes.” Claudio took a breath before just going on.
“Um. There’s no good place to start this.
” He knew he sounded uncertain. His Incantation training would have made it clear.
He was uncertain. More than he had been in any other conversation in his life, maybe.
“All right. Three parts. The gossip is about me, and about whether I’ve been seeing someone.
Then the, shall we say, social implications of that someone. Finally, Mother’s reaction to it.”
“Three parts.” Tiberius echoed it. “Wait. Are you seeing someone?”
Claudio nodded slowly, then felt his mouth twitch.
He really felt guilty that he hadn’t talked about it yet.
He hadn’t wanted to hide it, but he hadn’t known what words made sense.
“Yes. We’d not wanted to be public about it yet for several reasons.
” He looked off into the distance, back toward Schola.
“It’s still new, for one thing. There’s the Challenge. And there’s another piece.”
Tiberius folded his own hands on the table and just waited. When the silence kept going, he said pointedly, “If you drag it out, it’s just going to take longer to say.”
For a moment, it sounded entirely like Orion.
Or maybe Cammie. Some mix of them both. Tiberius had a directness to him he certainly hadn’t got from Claudio or Mother or Electra.
He didn’t let it out often, certainly not with most people.
But here and now, he was, and that made Claudio hope this would not foul everything up forever.
Claudio managed a smile, but he was sure it was shaky.
“I don’t know what you’re going to think of it.
And that matters to me.” He held up fingers, then let his hand rest on the top of the table.
“I’m going out to talk to your mother and sister tomorrow.
Tonight involves a certain amount of strategy over supper. ”
“Strategy?” Just the one word. Tiberius didn’t press further.
No way out but through. Claudio just went for it, like diving into the water.
“The complication is that I’ve been seeing a man.
Someone who works at the Ministry. Would you like to know more about him?
Or shall I talk about how the gossip came out?
” He heard his voice go crisp and tight at the end, and hated that, what Tiberius might assume from it.
In the end, all his son said was, “Both, please. I don’t think I know what I’d like to know yet.” That was its own bravery, and Claudio made a mental note to approve of it later. If they made it through this conversation still able to talk about that sort of thing.
Claudio managed a nod, but he was fumbling inside his head for what to say next. He’d rehearsed this in his head, as much as he could, but there’d only been a little time for that.
Tiberius hesitated, then reached out one hand.
Felt he could, that was something worth paying attention to, just touching Claudio’s forearm.
Lightly, as if it might shatter something, but touching.
Also not a thing their family did, or had done.
When he spoke, he sounded utterly earnest. “Father. I’m not upset.
But I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t know what might come up. Or what you want from me.”
“Right.” Claudio rubbed his face with his other hand, trying to weave enough bits together to keep this organised.
“If people ask you about it, I’d prefer if you put them off, at least for right now.
But I trust you to judge the situation, all right?
And I’ll have a word with your people here before I go.
” Then, one more breath. “His name’s Matthew Lawson, a bit younger than me.
Cammie’s year, but in Boar House. He’s the one who’s been running the Materia meetings, the weekly ones.
He had a bad turn after one. I saw him to his usual pub and people he knew.
We started out by having a drink, then— well. ”
Claudio watched Tiberius’s face for a moment, then realised that doing so might be the wrong thing.
Intimidating or off-putting or something of that kind.
He tried to do what Thesan would do, which meant looking, and then looking away, making it a soft gaze that took in the space.
Both he and Tiberius knew that from duelling, knew what it meant.
Tiberius held up his hand. “I don’t need, um. Specifics? But enough that you’re sure this is something other than friendship.”
“Oh, yes. We’re sure about that.” He could feel the smile on his face, and perhaps that was the thing that had given him away in the first place.
He couldn’t stop his fondness from showing.
His softening, in some particular way, despite the demands of the world.
“The timing’s complicated by the Challenge.
If it goes one way, I’m going to stop being a private person.
You know that far better than most.” He let out a small huff of breath “Anyway, we’ve not done anything visible in public, except come out of a pub with a certain quiet reputation together. Apparently, that’s enough.”
That had been the horrid part. That it hadn’t even been anything they’d done in public.
If they’d actually slipped that way, he could blame himself properly for the problem.
There’d be something to take on, to fight, to unpick into nothingness.
This was all whispers and assumptions. It would have been slander, except it was actually true.
Now he was just tired. Individual people could be wonderful.
People en masse could be awful. And he was sworn to help those same people, with any luck twice over by the end of August.
Tiberius must have realised something in there, because his next question had an edge to it, an urgency. “Are you all right? Is he all right?”
“Thank you for asking.” Claudio absolutely hadn’t been sure that was what would come out early in this conversation.
Mother hadn’t asked, after all. Orion and Gabe had checked on him, but they hadn’t fussed.
Of course he wasn’t all right. Talking about that part wouldn’t help anything.
But Tiberius had asked. “We’re having supper with Orion and Hypatia and Cammie and one of the Council— Mary Sprite.
I haven’t had a chance to talk to Matty yet, not in person. ”
He could see Tiberius make a note of the nickname.
They weren’t a family who used them. The nickname and the way Claudio’s voice curled around the name.
He’d have to chat with Alexander about that sometime.
About the shapes different names took on the tongue when there was fondness woven through them.